The rising prevalences of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) represent major challenges for global public health. Worldwide, there are more than 220 million patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus, figures which are projected to rise by 2030 (World Health Organisation 2010; International Diabetes Federation 2010). According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, rates of type 2 diabetes mellitus have tripled in the past 30 years. Diabetes now affects an estimated 23.6 million people in the United States; another 57 million have prediabetes. Prediabetes raises short-term absolute risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus five- to sixfold.
Type 2 diabetes mellitus is an increasingly prevalent disease that due to a high frequency of complications leads to a significant reduction of life expectancy. Because of diabetes-associated microvascular complications, type 2 diabetes is currently the most frequent cause of adult-onset loss of vision, renal failure, and amputations in the industrialized world. In addition, the presence of type 2 diabetes mellitus is associated with a two to five fold increase in cardiovascular disease risk.
After long duration of disease, most patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus will eventually fail on oral therapy and become insulin dependent with the necessity for daily injections and multiple daily glucose measurements.
The UKPDS (United Kingdom Prospective Diabetes Study) demonstrated that intensive treatment with metformin, sulfonylureas or insulin resulted in only a limited improvement of glycemic control (difference in HbA1c˜0.9%). In addition, even in patients within the intensive treatment arm glycemic control deteriorated significantly over time and this was attributed to deterioration of β-cell function. Therefore many patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus remain inadequately treated, partly because of limitations in long term efficacy, tolerability and dosing inconvenience of existing antihyperglycemic therapies.
Oral antidiabetic drugs conventionally used in therapy (such as e.g. first- or second-line, and/or mono- or (initial or add-on) combination therapy) include, without being restricted thereto, metformin, sulphonylureas, thiazolidinediones, glinides, DPP-4 inhibitors and α-glucosidase inhibitors.
The high incidence of therapeutic failure is a major contributor to the high rate of long-term hyperglycemia-associated complications or chronic damages (including micro- and macrovascular complications such as e.g. diabetic nephrophathy, retinopathy or neuropathy, or cardiovascular complications) in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.
Therefore, there is an unmet medical need for methods, medicaments and pharmaceutical compositions with a good efficacy with regard to glycemic control, with regard to disease-modifying properties and with regard to reduction of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality while at the same time showing an improved safety profile.